


Renee and Alexis, Bastogne, December 1944

by newredshoes



Series: Easy With Daemons In [3]
Category: Band of Brothers, His Dark Materials - Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Hospital, Nurse - Freeform, WWII, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/pseuds/newredshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days run together in Bastogne. She came to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renee and Alexis, Bastogne, December 1944

When Renee was a girl she was constantly slipping away from services down into the cathedral's depths. Alexis explored with her as whatever would take them somewhere new — finch, monkey, rabbit, cat, anything that could climb or fly or weave between tight, silent places. It was a treat before, spending time below the floor; what a difference a few years make.

"Help this man," Augusta says as she hurries past a cot. Her daemon is brilliant in the dim and solemn light, a tropical bird with vibrant plumage. Renee rubs the corner of her eye and leans over the wounded soldier. His heron daemon watches her warily from her perch by his foot. The man has taken a mortar hit: his side is torn to shreds, one arm sliced open, his thigh bound tight with bed sheets. He opens one eye and mumbles something in an accent she can't understand.

"Stay still, please," she tells him, and lays a hand on his. Alexis curls slowly down her wrist, and the man watches, transfixed or afraid, she cannot tell. Nearby, a cat daemon is wheezing; somewhere in the hollows where sound carries, she hears the frantic rush of prayer.

Alexis' tongue flickers out, and Renee feels the wounded man's pain with a dull wash of shock. She presses her lips together and molds her palm to his intact cheek. When she first came to help, she tried always to think of things to say. Stringing the English together took focus, but she assembled some stock phrases: _We will take care of you. This is God's house. You will be fine._ The second day of the German artillery barrages, she held a shrieking crow daemon as it thrashed and panicked and, without warning, vanished in her hands. That was the first time she threw up in the hospital. Jones, the American medic, sent her away and told her not to come back until she was fit to help. She came back, quieter and less willing to lie to the dying.

The mortar hit's breathing begins to even out. His heron folds her neck close to her body and balances on one leg, implacable eyes growing still. Renee stays as long as she can justify before moving on.

Alexis works his way up her arm to her shoulder, his scales unbroken and dry on the skin of her neck. "We should check on Private D'Amato," he murmurs. Renee lifts her eyebrows.

"He is still here?"

"I thought I saw him earlier. If he is not there, someone else who needs us will be."

Renee lifts a hand as she walks and runs the tips of her fingers over Alexis' spine. He ripples closer to her, despite the blood and grime beneath her nails.

A dog daemon ventures down the row of wounded men. Renee nearly trips over her: she's a nimble creature with a strange mottled black-and-white-and-brown coat. Her soldier pushes himself up on his elbows and twists to watch. "Please," says Renee brusquely, and the daemon scuttles back to hop up to the paratrooper's side. Renee has a moment of recollection, of Eugene bringing this man in earlier. He called the crypt heaven. She pauses by his berth. "What were you doing?"

He tries to sit up, but he can't get far before falling back, grasping his leg. "Thought I heard a buddy of mine back there," he says, and through her exhaustion Renee is fascinated by the way he speaks English. His daemon watches Renee with vivid brown eyes; they both do. "You don't think I could get up and check, do you?" he asks.

She pulls back the fabric of his pants to glance at the bandaged leg. "No," she says shortly. "You need to rest."

The man begins to smile. "Nurse, I can go, I been out on the line with worse—"

"No," she repeats, and leaves him. Augusta intercepts her before she can find Tommy D'Amato, and sets her to bedpan duty with the severe injuries in the transept. Renee manages to escape aboveground for a few moments; Jones is huddled behind a row of jeeps, furiously smoking a cigarette while his pelican daemon broods from the hood of a car. The tobacco smells awful, and it is cold and desolate in her ruined city. Alexis burrows under her shirt, pleading to go back inside. Renee watches the sheet of clouds overhead: more snow. It will keep coming down.

Later, she comforts a man who has lost both his feet to frostbite. He hates himself for leaving the war in such an ignoble way. He gnashes his teeth and clenches his fists and says words like "candyass" and "dishonorable." His rat daemon is curled tight in a ball against his neck; Renee doesn't see her face, not even when the tears leak sideways over the soldier's cheek. She holds his hand, rough and dry and discolored, but he doesn't grip back, and she worries if she is wasting her time.

A sergeant comes in pierced all through with wood. Augusta does not think any vital organs are hit, and Renee holds him steady as she pries out the ragged splinters. "Clean him up," she says when she's satisfied. Her daemon hops off the edge of the table and flutters to her shoulder; even his black feathers shimmer with color. Renee has never been in a position to ask what kind of bird he is; the time is never right. She wishes they both had time to talk. If nothing else, she would love to hear about a place as hot as the Congo.

"Help!" The familiar racket rings out in the stairway. "Doctors! We need help over here!"

A long, high-pitched wail pours into the crypt. Augusta rushes to the door, and Renee hurries after. The medics are supporting a large man between them; his face is wild with terror, but he is not bleeding. "What happened?" Augusta demands as they guide him to a table.

One medic unclenches his jaw. "Snipers," he growls. "Some fucking kraut shot his daemon."

They sling the soldier onto the table; a moment later, another medic hefts a burlap sling next to him. A white mastiff tumbles out, one shot through her armpit, another wound splitting her back. The points of her vertebra stand tall as the shells of houses. The soldier's cries redouble, his words a broken mess of English and Polish. "Get him away!" Augusta shouts at the medics. "Renee, keep him calm."

"Czesława!" he shrieks, and scrabbles toward the table. Renee and two of the medics fight to restrain him. A chaplain rushes to join them, and the four of them fight to give Augusta time to work on the daemon.

The mastiff makes no sound or movement, and one of the medics jabs a morphine syrette into the soldier's neck, even though he's already got one pinned to his jacket. The soldier passes out, still struggling, and the mastiff's glazed eyes slip shut, but she stays where she is. Even after they all disperse, Renee cannot stop looking over her shoulder to see if Czesława is still there. At a certain point, her eyes start swimming. When she cannot find Private D'Amato, she asks Augusta, who tells her he died during the night. Alexis tightens on her wrist, and Renee knows not to ignore him. She retreats into the supply room and leans against an empty crate, shuffling through her dress for chocolate.

She wakes up with her hands curled in her pockets. The crypt is quiet; she thinks it must be nighttime. Alexis stirs against her palm. She lets him twine through her fingers, and he knits himself with her before climbing her wrist and settling on her forearm. She takes a deep breath and massages the bridge of her nose. No one came to wake her up and bring her back. Outside, she can hear the footfalls of the other doctors and nurses. In an unrepentant moment, she hordes her time alone and bites into her brittle ration issue. When she has licked the waxy sweetness from the corners of her mouth, she wraps the rest of the bar in foil again and adjusts her scarf before stepping back onto the floor.

One figure close to the stair is sitting up on his berth; Renee can only make out a shadowy silhouette as she walks toward him, but then a canine shape stands beside him on the table, her head leaning close to his. It is Eugene's soldier, the one with the treeburst in his leg. "What are you doing, private?" she asks as she approaches.

He and his daemon stop whispering and turn to look at her; the daemon's eyes shine in the lantern glow. "Just your average jailbreak, ma'am," he says lightly. "Only my partner in crime here tells me we're not going."

She finds herself smiling. "You are not healed enough. You must give it one more day. Otherwise it will get worse."

He grips the edge of his table, feet dangling. He is barely older than she is. "I gotta get out of here," he says softly. Renee says nothing. She can't: she won't lie to him. His mouth thins. "I know, I know, I'm no good if I'm not rested up."

Renee looks around and shrugs. "You have a roof over your head. It is warm. The fighting will not end before you are better."

The soldier shakes his head and looks away. "Rather be shot at with my friends." His daemon abruptly lies down, perched for all the world like she's on a porch. The soldier turns back to her. "You got a few minutes? I just need to talk to somebody or I'll go nuts."

The rest of the wounded are hushed. After weighing the quiet, she nods. "Of course." He smiles.

"What's your name?"

She blinks. "This is what you want to talk about?"

"My name's Skinny," he continues, cheerfully dogged. "This is Rosalie."

She bites her lip. Augusta warned her about the need for compassion with distance. He is a soldier. They pass in and out of the world, of her world: they come to be put back together and they leave to go be killed. There are too many to know them all.

She lifts her chin. "Renee," she says. She opens her hand; Alexis glides onto her palm. "Alexis."

Skinny nods, a small smile stealing over his face. "You come here often?" She laughs, and Skinny grins.

Renee pauses, studying Rosalie. "I have never seen one like her before," she says. His eyebrows arc up.

"Really?" He turns to his daemon and starts scratching beneath her ears. "Bluetick coonhound."

She turns over the strange English name in her mouth as she watches Skinny and Rosalie. Tomorrow they will go back to the front lines. For now, though, for a short, sweet time, nothing calls her away, and the cathedral is quiet. Renee stays, and her hands are just her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently the Congolese nurse was named [Augusta Chiwi](http://www.101airborneww2.com/bandofbrothers6.html), and she lived for a very long time after the war. I thought it was important to remember that she was the trained nurse, and that Renee was just a local girl who offered to help.
> 
> [Alexis](http://www.behindthename.com/name/alexis) means "helper" or "defender"; in French the emphasis is on the last syllable: al-ek-SEE.


End file.
